


Teacher's Pet: Lorne

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Series: Teacher's Pet [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-09
Updated: 2006-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:15:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lorne watches and waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teacher's Pet: Lorne

**Author's Note:**

> [Cast of Characters/the Big List of OCs (because there are more than seven people in Atlantis and they all have names)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/372765)

  
In the grand scheme of things, Lorne's neither amused nor embarrassed at how little things have changed in the months since Sheppard got de-aged. Or, more precisely, he's neither amused nor embarrassed when the civilians keep pointing it out to him.

It's not a matter of proving how much or how little Sheppard contributed to the day-to-day functionality of Atlantis's military; Lorne knows better than anyone else how much work he had or hadn't done. But talk to anyone who has spent any time saying "yes, sir!" and they'll tell you that the actual running of any military unit is the work of NCOs and mid-level officers. Which means that Sheppard no longer being in a position to make executive decisions doesn't really change the fact that he rarely had many to make.

That the thirty-nine-year-old Sheppard might possibly have made some of the same choices as the eight-year-old version is pretty much accepted fact within the hallowed halls of Little Tripoli. Because you never really do outgrow the love of big guns and fast rides and Sheppard has never bothered to hide it. It made him a popular commander and would have made him an even more popular playmate for the marines, but their enthusiasm for entertaining the Little Colonel (the marines have been hard-pressed to drop the "sir" for the duration and there is no chance on getting any of them to call him "John" or even "Sheppard", so it is mostly Little Colonel or LC) dimmed somewhat after the third time McKay took 'revenge' for what he considered improper care of a minor. _That_ had stopped being fun months ago, so the marines have learned to stay away.

Overall, at least as far as the military in Atlantis is concerned, Doctors Weir and McKay have pretty much done all they can to keep Sheppard away -- far away. Except, of course, in the capacity of convenient -- and very temporary -- babysitters. They'll throw him to the marines to burn off some of Sheppard's seemingly unlimited energy, then pick him back up once he is manageable again.

To a point, Lorne understands and so do the marines -- the fear of leaving a child in the custody of a social group known for low morals and foul language is certainly not unreasonable. But only to a point and that point is wearing away under the strain and Lorne isn't sure how much longer it can hold. How much longer _he_ can hold.

He has been doing a slow burn on behalf of himself and the marines for months because, right from the start, the cabal of caretakers (McKay and Weir and, surprisingly, Teyla and Ronon) decided that _their_ relationships with John Sheppard were the only ones that mattered and the only ones that needed to be reinforced during the six months when all bonds were torn asunder.

That Lorne is missing his colleague (and, yes, _friend_ ) and that two hundred marines are missing their much-beloved CO... doesn't seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. They wear a uniform and call Sheppard "sir" and none of the cabal can really understand how much more than "boss" that really means or how much it hurts to be excluded from the life of a person who used to call them all _his_. Who will one day, god willing, do so again.

And so he's passed from hurt to pissed to resigned to furious to wondering if he should stop fighting Caldwell and the SGC so hard to keep Atlantis out of their hands because maybe the cabal needs to lose Sheppard to understand what they've done by imprinting their own disdain for the military upon the child who will one day grow up to be a soldier. But, in the end, he knows that he won't betray them to the SGC. He won't betray _Sheppard_ like that. Because one day Sheppard will be himself again and he shouldn't be punished for the good intentions gone awry of his colleagues. Lorne has held the fort every other time. He'll hold it now. Even if it means not arguing when Kavanagh, whom the adult Sheppard dislikes as much as everyone else does, is considered more worthy to spend quality time with _John_ than anyone with dogtags.

Humoring the cabal, however, is becoming more and more impractical. Especially now that they know that Sheppard is getting his memories back and why it took so long for the re-aging process to start.

(Because they were doing the priestess's work for her. Because they were so busy building themselves a better John Sheppard, getting it _right_ this time, that they missed the part where they neglected everything about Sheppard that had made them so devoted to him in the first place. Lorne doesn't say these things, not to anyone. Because there is too much work to be done in too little time to waste energy in assigning blame.)

A little more than six months and a little less than forty years are coming together like freight trains on a collision course and they need to be ready to pick up the pieces once they meet. Because the initial blending isn't going all that fantastically.

It is all well and good that the pint-sized Sheppard can read Ancient and understand wormhole physics, but he is also dreaming of Genii invaders and downed helicopters in Jalalabad and while Lorne is sure that letting Sheppard cry himself to sleep in Teyla's lap is comforting, it doesn't solve the problem. And the frustrating part, the what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you-people part, is that he _knows_ that Weir and McKay know it too.

For all of McKay's creepy Dr. Evil tendencies with Sheppard -- the scientists are starting to call Sheppard Mini-Me -- Lorne knows that McKay's concern goes deeper than just building himself a more pliable team leader. It's just that Lorne _doesn't_ know how to appeal to that side of McKay. At least not without risking revocation of his limited alone-time with Sheppard -- or being banned from seeing Sheppard at all, like it is with the marines.

Initially, getting his time with Sheppard (an hour every other evening) was more about earning a moral victory than anything else. It was (is) deeply offensive that it apparently crossed nobody's mind that he might miss spending time with Sheppard. Or that Sheppard might actually _want_ to spend time with him. But he did and neither Weir nor McKay could come up with a sufficiently good reason to turn down the request. So Lorne got his hour and from there it developed from moral victory into meaningful time together, even if _John_ didn't understand it as anything more than a part of the complex custody arrangement and seemed to consider Lorne a kind of weird, if fun, uncle.

It started mostly as a story hour -- Lorne telling him of when he used to fly planes for the Air Force, of flying jumpers in Atlantis, of missions with SG-11 that could be sanitized for a child's ears. He let Sheppard read the spy novels and the guns-and-toys magazines that the marines got for him out of Little Tripoli's library, a crime for which McKay would kill him if he ever found out that Sheppard was secretly reading Tom Clancy.

It was more than just about getting the kid some contraband -- Atlantis as a whole is spoiling him rotten, so it's not like Sheppard needed the treats -- it was about getting the kid some appreciation for the life he will one day have to lead again. Because there was no way to tell _John_ that he couldn't grow up to be a scientist just like McKay, that he had to grow up to be an Air Force Officer whether he liked it or not. Whether he _feared_ it or not.

And then the nightmares began, or at least got serious enough that Sheppard couldn't hide them any more -- a discovery culminating in one heart-stopping radio transmission in the middle of the night and ending with a terrified little boy sobbing on his shoulder and clutching him tight. The closest Lorne ever came to pulling rank (such as it is), to taking John away from the civilians and hiding him on the mainland with the marines like some sort of warped _Apocalypse Now_ until _John_ became _Sheppard_ again, was that night. Because not only was McKay ignoring the signs, he was ignoring the _boy_. And that was unforgivable.

As best as Lorne can figure, Sheppard is getting flashbacks and memories that are mostly accurate and a few that are warped into true nightmares. John Sheppard, the Big Colonel, is a fantastically private man, guarding his many secrets behind layers of affability and charm. But John Sheppard, the Little Colonel, is a confused and terrified boy unable to hide anything of what he's feeling. And Lorne is torn between embarrassment that Sheppard has been laid open like this without his consent and _relief_ because he can so clearly see what needs to be done.

And so while their hour is still mostly a story hour, now instead of tales of far-away Jaffa and funny-voiced Goa'uld, Lorne talks of Pegasus. Forgetting what it says about the adult Sheppard, _John_ needs to be convinced that he won't grow up to become a monster. He doesn't get to spend enough time with the marines to know that just because you know how to use a gun doesn't mean that all you want to do -- all you _can_ do -- is kill with it.

Getting the boy to talk about the dreams is next to impossible, so Lorne doesn't try. Instead, he starts stories of missions Sheppard's been on and tries to gauge by the reaction whether or not it's ringing a bell. He doesn't tell the full stories -- he doesn't know them -- but usually he knows enough so that he can convince Sheppard that everyone (or most everyone, because this isn't like the movies) came home safe and sound and that the man he had been and would be again is not evil or bad, that he does everything he can to protect his people and that makes Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard very _good_. And nothing to be ashamed of.

It's weird to oversimplify like this, to reduce so much gray area into neat piles of black and white, but what else can he do? He has one hour, seven days every fourteen, to get a little boy to accept his fate.

 

* * *


End file.
